Have Black attitudes toward gays undergone much change today? Hardly.
Rappers such as Ice Cube still rap that "Real niggers ain't
faggots."
Leading Afrocentrists have sworn that "homosexuality is a deviation
from Afrocentricity." And bushels of Black ministers, with generous
support from their white Christian fundamentalist brethren, still brand
homosexuality "a sin before God." Some Blacks have escalated
their low-intensity warfare against gays to an all-out, "take no
prisoners"
battle.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has made it almost part of his
divine mission to attack homosexuality. Even though the Million Man March
publicly welcomes gays and treated the ones who participated civilly, no
one really believed that this represented a sea of change in attitude
among
Blacks toward gays.

If some did, Farrakhan quickly dispelled that notion in a TV interview
with Evans and Novak in March 1997. He made it clear that he still
regarded
homosexuality as an "unnatural act" and would discourage the
practice whenever and wherever he could.

Some traditional civil rights leaders have continued to denounce
homophobia
and urge support of gay rights. They remind Blacks that homophobia and
racism are two sides of the same coin and that many of the same white
conservatives,
from Pat Buchanan to Jerry Falwell, that relentlessly savage gays are the
same ones that relentlessly savage civil rights gains.

They are right, but their arguments still cut little weight with many
Blacks. The one and only comprehensive survey conducted in 1995 to
measure
Black attitudes toward gays, found that Blacks, like whites, hadn't
slackened
up on their hostility one bit.

More damning and ominous for Blacks is the fact that they still
continued
to pile special scorn on Black gay men. The one potential bright spot in
this even has a taint.

The survey found that there was less anti-gay sentiment among the more
educated, less religious and more affluent Blacks, but ONLY if the gay
male was white. They still cast Black gay men deep in the nether world
of contempt.

That anti-gay feeling runs so deep among many African Americans that
there is a virtual "Black-out" of any discussion or activities
of Black gay men. Black gays and lesbians have held a number of National
Black Gay Conferences since 1987. Yet there has been only the scantiest
mention of them in the Black press. The national gay and lesbian
publication,
BLK, might as well gather dust in the Smithsonian Museum for all that
most
Blacks know about it.

Black gay men continue to feel like men without a people. They carry
the triple burden of being Black, male, and gay. They are rejected by
many
Blacks and sense that they are only barely tolerated by white gays. Many
Black gay men feel trapped, tormented and confused by this quandary. They
are still forced to repress, hide and deny their sexuality from family
members, friends, and society.

Black gay men worry that the hatred of other Black men towards them
won't change as long as they (heterosexual Black men) feel that their
manhood
is subverted, accept America's artificial standard of manhood, and gay
attitudes remain firmly rooted in much of the American public.

This will only change when more Black leaders understand that when you
scratch a homophobe, underneath you'll invariably find someone who will
deny you all your civil rights. And when more Black men realize that
Black
gay bashing will win no brownie points with conservatives and will
certainly
not make them any more sympathetic to Black people.

Khalid Muhammad, the former national spokesman for the Nation of
Islam,
found that out. In a widely publicized speech in 1994, he made one of the
most devastating and disgusting public assaults on gays. Yet he remains
one of the most vilified Black men in America.

Some of the leaders who upheld the spirit of the Million Man March
were
gays. This was a positive step in that it was tacit recognition that all
Black men, regardless of sexuality, face many of the same problems. But
it in no way meant that the majority of Black men were willing to
completely
accept Black gay men as brothers and equals.

In time, more gay Black men will come out of the closet and more
heterosexual
Black men will meet them, get to know them better, or in some cases,
discover
that they have known them all along.

This will force even more Black men to re-examine their own faulty
definitions
of manhood and confront their own homophobia. This will go far toward
ridding
them of their fear of Black gays as their bogeymen.

But mostly I hope that more Black men are wise enough to see that they
should be the last ones in America to jettison other Blacks who may be
in a position to make valuable contributions to the struggle for
political
and economic empowerment.

It took time for me to learn all of this, but I did, because I no
longer
wanted my gay problem to be my Black problem.

Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of The Assassination of the
Black Male Image, Beyond O.J.: Race, Sex, and Class Lessions For
America, and Black Fatherhood: The Guide to Male Parenting.
Reponses may be sent e-mail to Earl
Ofari Hutchingson Telephone: 213-298-0266